My cat was hit by a car the other day

So for starters, I live in an apartment complex. I was taking care of this orange cat because his previous owner had passed away. He was indoor/outdoor and everyone in the neighborhood loved him. On Friday night, he went outside of my house around 6:30pm. Side note, he would not use a litter box or I would have just kept him indoors at all times.

I called for him around 10:30 pm and he wouldn’t come. Sometimes he chose to stay out but most nights he did sleep with me.

The next morning a neighbor messaged me and told me he was dead in her backyard. She said she wasn’t sure what happened as her camera didn’t catch much. I dug a hole later that day for him and someone else wrapped him in a towel and we buried him. The neighbor said it looked like he had lot of head trauma but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him that way.

Later on, I heard some kids saying that my cat had actually been killed by another boy in the neighborhood. Apparently they heard him bragging that he tied my cat in a trash bag and beat him with a baseball bat. The cops were even called. It was a very emotional few days.

However, earlier today I sat in my housing managers office and reviewed footage to see if we could figure out exactly what happened. After jumping around, we finally found footage at 11:52 at night of him being hit by a car. He was lying in the road and attempted to move out of the way but instead ran right under the tires.

It was incredibly hard to watch and while it really was a tragic accident, I am very thankful it didn’t happen the other way.

I feel responsible. I should have looked for him harder and he would still be here. I am heartbroken over him being gone. I wish I would have went back outside to find him. 😭